Foodie News

A restaurant to watch: GQ magazine cannot wait for Oxheart, a hot new"vegetarian" spot

Oxheart's logo
Poached Gulf sea snails served with fermented daikon radish, mirin tapioca andsmoked pork in a snail shell at Money Cat.
Photo by Ruthie Johnson Miller
Justin Yu
Photo by Ruthie Johnson Miller

It looks like Underbelly might have some competition for the most anticipated restaurant opening in Houston in 2012.

GQ has a new list of the five "hottest restaurant openings" around the country this year, and Houston's Oxheart came in second, described as "vegetarian for non-vegetarians."

Oxheart is the forthcoming project by Justin Yu, Karen Man and Justin Vann, who made a splash in Houston last year with their feverishly anticipated pop-up Money Cat brunches at Chinatown's Umai. Scheduled for a March debut, Oxheart is taking shape in the former Latin Bites space in the warehouse district on the north side of downtown.

And yes, despite the carnivorous-sounding name, Oxheart will have a veggie-friendly focus. Yu and his partners are planning to offer three tasting menus nightly: A four-course offering with meats, fish and vegetables, a vegetarian four-course menu and a seven-course tasting menu that's a combination of both.

As Alison Cook reported,

Oxheart is named for a carrot variety. And a tomato variety, and a cabbage variety, and the heart of a large animal. But anyone who has been fortunate enough to attend Yu's pop-up dinners over the course of the past year can guess that it's the carrot that is closest to Yu's own heart. Unusually for a Houston chef, he gives vegetables their own importance and refinement, weaving them seamlessly into meat and fish dishes, and thinking about them in really interesting ways."

Can Oxheart really match Underbelly for pre-opening excitement? Which restaurant are you dying to try?

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What's Eric Eating Episodes 404 and 405

Bobby Heugel gets candid about the future of restaurants in Houston

Courtesy of Through Fare Hospitality.

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On this week's episode of "What's Eric Eating," hospitality veteran Bobby Heugel joins CultureMap editor Eric Sandler to discuss the current state of the restaurant industry. One of the founders of Anvil. Heugel is a co-owner of Thorough Fare Hospitality, the company behind Refuge, Squable, Better Luck Tomorrow, Theodore Rex, and Catbirds.

While those places have achieved considerable fame and financial success, Heugel is concerned about the future prospects of independently-owned restaurants and bars. He and Sandler discuss the increased costs for materials, labor, and real estate that make it more expensive than ever to operate a business. They also look at some of the behind-the-scenes requirements of leasing real estate that didn't exist when he opened Anvil in 2009.

It has him concerned that quirky, ambitious establishments won't be able to call Houston home.

"I hear more about the struggles than I did in the past. If you compare this era to 2010, 2012, which I know was a big boom for independent restaurants in the city, I know there was a lot of optimism at that time. We opened Anvil in 2009. I did Underbelly, Hay Merchant, and Blacksmith after that," he says.

"That optimism is not here anymore. There's so many more financial barriers. There's no way that we open Underbelly today. It's not possible. WE don't get approved as tenants. We can't afford to open the restaurant. It never exists. That building gets sold to a developer who wants to turn it into an AT&T store."

Listen to the full episode to hear Heugel's thoughts on the kind of concepts he thinks are still viable. He also provides a brief update on the first year of operations at Catbirds.

On this week's other episde, Chelsea Thomas, staff writer for The Infatuation Houston, joins Sandler to discuss the news of the week. Their topics consist of Shake Shack closing two Houston locations and the extension of Houston Restaurant Weeks.

In the restaurants of the week segment, Thomas and Sandler share first impressions of Thai Tail, the fast casual restaurant from the owner of Kin Dee, and Ramen Moto, the new izakaya from Tiger Den chef and founder Mike Tran.

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